Part 10
The next part of our design was to erect a scaffolding about the post. For this we chose and cut down stalks of the bamboo-like plant of which we had made our flagstaff. These we lashed firmly together with creeper ropes--or rather Billy did it, he having a seaman's dexterity in such things; and driving their lower ends into the ground, we contrived to construct a scaffolding four-square about the post, each face of it about nine feet long, and carried up a little higher than the top of the post, so as to clear the ropes that held this in position. The scaffolding being finished with a prodigious deal of labour--for having no ladder we were obliged to make standing-places of stones, which were very insecure; indeed, both Billy and I tumbled off them more than once, and grew very angry at having to collect the stones and build them up again: the scaffolding being finished, I say, we made a light platform of straight branches upon the top of it, but not quite covering it, so that the top of the post was not hidden.
"It won't bear us, that I'm sure," says Billy, when we had made the platform.
"Try," said I. "You are lighter than me: you go first."
Billy clambered on to the platform very nimbly, and though the scaffolding trembled and swayed so that I thought to see it instantly collapse, it did no such thing, and I ventured to climb up on the other side and join Billy. I was much more clumsy than he was, and pretty nearly lost my balance, but managed to steady myself, and then we both stood on the platform, and found that it bore the weight of us both very well.
The next thing was to haul up the implement which, after much consideration, we had devised for driving in the post. 'Twas a massy stump of a tree, which, both together, we could heave about two feet above the ground--such a thing as resembled in some sort the big wooden pummet which road-menders use for hammering down the cobbles in the streets, though our pummet had no handle either at the top or the side, but must be heaved up by main force from the bottom. We tied it many times round with our creeper ropes, and, having mounted again on to the platform, we began to haul. But the weight of the pummet, and our heaving, and the being both on one side of the platform, was too much for our frail support; the scaffolding fell apart, down we toppled headlong after the pummet, and the strain upon the sustaining ropes being too great, one of them snapped, and down came the post, falling very luckily in the opposite direction from us, or we might have been killed, or at least had our heads broken.
Billy fairly howled with disappointment at this overthrow of our hopes, and let forth many of the ugly words which he had learnt, either at Limehouse or aboard the _Lovey Susan_. Indeed, it was a most vexatious accident, for the labour of a good many days was undone in a moment, and we had to begin over again, both to erect the corner-post and to construct a scaffolding. Billy, who was like a child in some things, declared and vowed he would work no more on the big hut. "I take my davy I won't," says he. "What's the good? Here's another big hole tore in my breeches. Why should you and me work like slaves when there ain't no call for it, victuals growing free? And as for lodgings, the small hut is good enough for me. We don't want a castle when there ain't no one here but dogs and pigs; and I tell you what it is, master, we don't eat enough pork, and I wish we had some onions;" and so he talked on, and I said nothing, for I knew he would grumble until he was tired, and then readily take up his work again. So in fact it proved, for after a day's idleness, or rather change, we spending the day in hunting for eggs, we set to work to weave more ropes and put together another scaffolding, which when we tried it stood very steady, even when we hauled up the pummet. With this pummet we drove the corner-post into the earth inch by inch, lifting it with our hands (it was as much as we could do) and then letting it fall plump on the head of the post. 'Twas terribly slow work, and hard too, and we thought our backs would break across the middle, they ached so much, only we had to pause in the driving every now and then to let down our platform, in proportion as the post went deeper into the ground, and this of course took a great while. However, we drove the post at last to the depth of four feet, and then Billy was just as elated as before he had been cast down, for the post stood so massive and solid that it seemed nothing short of an earthquake could move it; and that was strong enough for us, for against an earthquake, if it came, of course we could do nothing. Having succeeded with our first post, we did not take quite so long about erecting the other three; but it was near six weeks, I should think, before we got all four in position, I mean six weeks after we had felled the trunks, they having then to be pointed with our rude axes, and the scaffolding having to be built up afresh with the same care for the fourth post as for the first.
When we had the four posts up we were very well satisfied with our handiwork, but desperately weary, for we had stuck to it day after day without respite except to get our food and perform the other articles of our regular life--bathing, and going up to our watch-tower, as we called it, and so forth. Accordingly I said to Billy that we would take a week's holiday before we made the walls of our house, on which Billy sighed very heavily.
"Why, don't you want a holiday?" I asked him.
"'Course I do, master," says he, "but how can you have a holiday without any beer?"
He then told me that when his father took a holiday, he drove to some country part near London--Islington, or maybe Hampstead--and spent the day in playing skittles and drinking beer. This put a notion into my head, and the first day of our holiday we played skittles with some short posts set up in the sand on the beach, bowling at them with cocoa-nuts. 'Twas as good a sport as we could devise at that time, though we soon came to invent a better, as you shall hear.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
OF MY ENCOUNTER WITH A SEA MONSTER; AND OF THE MEANS WHEREBY WE PROVIDED OURSELVES WITH ARMS
I think it was on the second day of our week's holiday that we had a terrible fright, which affected us the more because hitherto there had been so little to alarm us. We had eaten our dinner, and were roaming idly along the high ground in the west of the island, when, looking over the brink, Billy spied some nests among the rocks in the face of the cliff. We had never been able to obtain near so many eggs for our food as we wished, the hens laying their eggs, as I have said, in secret places which required much searching for, and for that we did not on our working days care to spend time. But spying these nests, Billy was set on clambering down to them to see if they contained eggs, which would make us a very good supper.
There was a narrow ledge that ran down the face of the cliff, ending not far above the sea, which at this spot washed the base, there being no beach of sand. The descent was so steep, and the ledge so narrow, that I was in some doubt whether the attempt were not too dangerous; but Billy, as I say, was set on it, and when I saw him actually begin to clamber down, I could do naught but accompany him, and soon outstripped him, because he stopped more often than I did to pry in all the crevices. The face of the cliff was much scarred, and certain large boulders in it seemed to me to be very loosely embedded; indeed, now and again a piece of rock would become detached when I catched hold of it to steady myself, and rolled and rumbled away until it fell into the sea. You see by this how carefully it behoved us to go, and if the ledge had not been a little wider than it appeared from the top, I think I should have given up the enterprise. However, we persevered, and in the course of our descent rifled of their eggs such nests as came within our reach, the rightful owners of the nests, which were sea-birds, wheeling about our heads with a clamour of shrill and plaintive cries. We put the eggs in our pockets, having no other means of carrying them, and when Billy sighed for a basket I said that we would try to make one the very same day, there being plenty of material for weaving.
[Sidenote: A Sea Monster]
Here and there in the face of the cliff there grew trees, not of great size; indeed, it was a marvel that any grew, the ground being so hard and rugged. When we came near the sea, we saw a little cluster of a kind of pine tree[1] (at least I judged it so by its exceeding pleasant smell) which jutted out over the sea, one of the tallest of them, covered with great bunches of flowers of a bright yellow colour, very pretty, reaching up to the edge of the narrow path down which we were climbing. It was a strange tree, for instead of having a trunk thicker at the bottom, like other trees, it divided into a number of shoots, which entered the ground in the shape of a pyramid. I was just reaching forward
[1] Probably the screw-pine (_Pandanus odoratissimus_).--H.S.
to pluck one of the blossoms when I felt a strange tickling about my ankle, and immediately afterward a sharp pain like that of a gad-fly's bite, only worse. I thought a scorpion or some such thing had bitten me, and turned myself a little, for the ledge on which I stood was too narrow for great movements, and drew my leg back so that the reptile should not sting me again. But I felt then as if my ankle had been caught in a noose, which was being drawn constantly tighter, and I could not free my leg from the grip, though I kicked as much as I dared. Looking down to see what was holding me, I was annoyed, yet relieved at the same time, to find that my leg was caught in nothing worse, as it appeared, than a big brown, or rather brownish-purple, leaf, into which I supposed I had unwittingly put my foot. Yet I wondered that a mere leaf could grip me so firmly, and as I took out of my belt the axe without which I never went abroad, intending to cut the impediment away, my eye chanced to travel along the leaf towards its furthest extremity, where it was partly hidden by a cluster of fruit.
And then I felt a shiver run down my spine like a trickle of cold water, for there, beyond the cluster, I saw two horrid eyes, like a parrot's, gleaming in the midst of a big shapeless body, which I knew to be alive by its pulsations. I had never in my life seen or heard of such a thing, and knew not what it was or whether it was dangerous or no; but the mere sight of it filled me with a sickening dread, and when I saw the loathly monster drawing nearer to me, working its way, as it seemed, by the tentacles wherewith it had attached itself to the tree, and its body throbbing, I was as near overcome with sheer terror as any man could be, so that I could not think, nor even cry out to Billy, who was some few yards above me. All that I could do, and that was only by instinct, was to resist the creature's pull, which had all but dislodged me from my narrow foothold.
It was Billy's voice that roused me from this palsy of the mind. "My pockets won't hold no more, master," he said, being quite ignorant of what was passing beneath him. Then I cried out to him that a monster was attacking me, and at the same time I bent down and slashed furiously with my axe upon the tentacle that gripped my leg, and turned sick again when the axe-head encountered the slimy mass. But my strokes, doubly redoubled, caused the monster somewhat to relax its grip, and immediately afterward a big jagged piece of rock, hurled by Billy, smote full upon it with a sickening thud, and rebounding fell with a splash into the sea. The monster, as if stunned by the shock, loosened its hold on the branches to which, as we now saw, it had anchored itself, and in a little while fell into the sea and disappeared from our sight.
"I never did see such a wicked villain," says Billy. "Why, master, you're as white as a sheet!" and, indeed, I was not far from swooning, the horror of that great beast being still upon me. Billy was not near so much affected, not having felt the monster's grip nor seen closely its baleful eyes; and I think Billy was a trifle scornful of the terror I could not conceal, though afterwards he said he didn't wonder at my feeling pretty bad. It was some little time before I was sufficiently recovered to attempt the upward climb; but, with Billy's help, I presently clambered to the top, and threw myself very thankfully on the grass, never heeding Billy's lamentable outcry when he found that two of the eggs he carried had broken in his pocket.
This terrible encounter, and most happy escape, set me on thinking first what a mercy it was I carried my axe, and then how perfectly defenceless we were against any human enemy that might come against us armed. I said to Billy that we must spend the rest of our holiday in making weapons, though when I spoke I had not the least notion of what we could make that would be of any avail. Billy was for making huge clubs, and sticking pieces of flint into their knobby ends, which would beyond doubt have proved very formidable weapons at close quarters; but, as I had told him already, we should be shot down with spears or arrows before we could come within reach of the enemy, and therefore we could do nothing against them unless we made weapons like their own. Whereupon Billy declared for spears, since we had no strings for bows, and we spent a day cutting light poles for the shafts and in searching for sharp flints that might serve as the heads. But we had such a difficulty in fastening the heads on, and the spears were so exceeding rude and clumsy when made, that I despaired of ever making serviceable defensive weapons of them, and being by no means satisfied that it was beyond our capacity to fashion bows and arrows, I seized occasion while Billy was cooking our supper (which was baked bread-fruit and fried eggs, the latter stronger in flavour and not near so pleasant as hens' eggs, having a fishy taste)--I seized occasion, I say, to make a first trial for a bow-string, which Billy had very shrewdly perceived would be the greatest difficulty.
[Sidenote: Making Arms]
I tried first of all a very thin strand of a creeping plant, but though that was tough enough, it was not at all elastic, so that I gave that up at once. Next I bethought me of the fibres in the husks and leaves of the cocoa-nut, and wondered whether these could be woven into a cord; and if any are surprised that I should so much as mention this, having seen cocoa-nuts, perhaps, only as they appear in our shops, I will explain that the nut itself is enclosed in a tough fibrous husk of about two inches in thickness, while the leaf is covered for two or three feet of its length with a fibrous matting, very fine and strong, which acts as a kind of brace to the stalk and keeps it steadily fixed to the trunk. I had taken note of this fibrous substance, and, indeed, thought I remembered that the native people made thread of it; but when I came to the actual experiment, I found that the thread so made was as tough as you please, and it served us excellent well afterward in many ways, as will presently be seen, but it was quite lacking in that spring without which a bow-string is impossible.
I do not mean to say that I made all these discoveries while Billy was cooking the supper, but only that I began to make my trials then. It was, indeed, several days before we lighted on something that was suited to our purpose, and that by a kind of accident. We had gone up the mountain, as was our daily custom, to make our survey, and coming down again we left our usual path, for no reason that I can remember, and came upon a patch of plants of a kind that we had not observed before. We had become by this time so knowing in the vegetation of our island, though quite ignorant of the names of the plants, that we stopped to examine this new kind, and plucked some of it, which we peeled as we went our way. It seemed to me that the bark of it had a certain stretch in its fibres, and when we got back to our hut we pulled the fibres out and twisted some of them together in the manner of a cord, and fastened the ends of the string thus made to the ends of a short pliable twig, and to our great joy, when I pulled the string and released it suddenly, it shot back with a twang as like that of a true cord as can be imagined. In my delight I cried out that I would be Robin Hood and Billy should be Little John, which he took at first to be an affront on his shortness of stature, he being eight inches or more less than I was at that time; he grew afterwards till there was no more than four inches betwixt us. But on my telling him what stories I could remember of Robin Hood and his bold men in Lincoln green--Friar Tuck and Maid Marion and the rest of the company--Billy, who had never heard of any of these before, was greatly delighted, though he doubted whether they were quite so good marksmen as the stories said, and professed that of them all he would have preferred to be Friar Tuck, who had a nice taste in venison, just as Billy himself had in pork. However, he agreed to be Little John, reminding me very pertinently that we had not yet made our bows and arrows.
I had already made up my mind as to the wood we should use for making the bows. It was that same red wood of which I have spoken once or twice, and which, being flexible as well as hard, seemed to me the fittest for our purpose of all the woods in the island. Accordingly we chose two strong saplings of this tree growing to my own height, or a little more, and having uprooted them, we cut off the branches and twigs, peeled the bark off, and then pared them for three or four inches in the centre, so as we might grip them easily. This done, we shaved the ends as well as we could with our axes until they tapered, and about two inches from each end we burned a notch in which we purposed fitting the strings. Thus with an easy day's work we had two fine bows, not very cunningly shaped, but strong and serviceable--at least, we hoped so.
Billy took upon himself to make some arrows while I made the strings. For this purpose he chose some straight light shoots, about as thick as your finger, peeled off the bark as we did with the saplings, and trimmed them with his axe and other sharp stones, rubbing them also with sand, until they were wonderfully smooth. Billy was more patient in this work than I had ever seen him, and as each shoot was prepared he held it up to his eye and looked along it as if to see whether it were a trifle out of the straight, and if he thought so, he would rub and polish again until he was satisfied. He had near a dozen of these shoots prepared by the time I had finished the strings for our two bows, and he then began to point the heads; but it appeared that he was quite ignorant of the use of feathers, so while he was pointing the shafts I roamed about the woods in search of feathers, and found a good number on the ground, and these we stuck on the tail end of the shafts as I had seen them in pictures, for as for the actual things, I had never had them in my hand. This made me wish, and so did many other matters, that I had given more heed to the construction of things, for barring pottery and rabbit-hutches I was a perfect simpleton in using my hands. Of course, when the first arrow was finished, I tried it with the bow, and found that it did not fly near so well as I hoped; nor did the second and third that we made, which was a great trouble to us. The flight of these arrows was neither far nor steady, and for a long time we could not make out in the least why we had failed. It was Billy that discovered the reason, though I believe it was more by guess than by deduction.
"Why, master," he said, "I do believe 'tis all along o' those silly feathers you've been and gone and stuck in, so that the tail's heavier than the head."
I saw that there might be something in Billy's notion, so we first of all tried the experiment of making one of the arrows taper towards the tail; and when we found that it certainly flew from the bow much better than the others, I thought of improving still further by fitting stone heads to the shafts. We split up some pieces of flint, and using a flat corner of the lava tract as a kind of anvil, Billy chipped away at some of the smaller pieces with a heavy lump of the rock containing iron until we had a little heap of flakes shaped something like a leaf. Some of these we lashed to shallow grooves in our shafts by means of pieces of the string I had made; others we drove into clefts in the top of the shafts; and when we came to try these new-tipped arrows on the bow, we found that they flew very much better than any that we had made before.
By the time we had furnished ourselves with the bows and a dozen arrows our week's holiday was past, and we ought by rights to have gone back to our work on the house. But arrows were not made merely to be looked at, nor to be shot off only for fun, as Billy said, and he was bent on employing our new weapons in the useful work of providing food. We had had nothing but bread-fruit, cocoanuts, and eggs, and pork twice, ever since we had been on the island, which I reckoned to be now a matter of three or four months or so, and I own I agreed with Billy that we should be none the worse of a more frequent change of diet. Of late we had seen very little of the wild pigs, being so much busied with our building work and pottery, and other things; but the dogs were frequent spectators of our proceedings, though not so constantly as at first, finding no profit in them, I suppose. However, we now set off with our bows and arrows, fiercely bent on slaughter.
We tramped for a good long time across the island before we discovered a herd of pigs in a little open space beyond a wood. They were grunting, as pigs do, and poking their snouts into the ground as if in search of food, though I doubted whether they would find anything fit to eat, even for them, which are not particular, as everybody knows. We crept up very stealthily to the edge of the open space, so that they did not perceive us, and then, selecting the two nearest animals, we let fly our shafts both at the same moment. The arrows flew very swiftly from the bows, but clean over the pigs, so that we did not hit one of them, and the twang of the bow-strings being very audible, the pigs instantly took fright, and scampered away, all but one old boar, as he seemed, who stood with his snout lifted, grunting very loud, as if angry with being disturbed.